Horn & Whistle Magazine publisher Eric Larson's
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What are my latest thoughts and ideas? Find out here. Also post your own comments and thoughts in the form below. Almost anything even remotely related to the Horn & Whistle hobby is OK on this page, [steam power, industry, railroading, maritime activities] but please, no personal stuff and no politics. I am neither a psychiatrist, matchmaker or political pundit. Save that for the chat rooms! OK enough introduction. Here I go!

Railroad Air Horns on private vehicles. This is always a controversial subject. What do I think of it?
If you have a legitimate interest in our hobby and are setting up a vehicle for performing run-by's at one of our events or otherwise plan to use your vehicle as an exhibit for the benefit of our hobby, it's a great idea.
     You can, in the right setting, achieve essentially the same moving signal charac-teristics complete with fascinating Doppler effects and echoes, and it's a great way to get the effect of a horn on a locomotive if you are not near a real track. However.....

     If your intent is to blow others out of your way on the highway or scare the living shit out of pedestrians, then this idea really sucks big time.
     I can see the use of a super loud RR horn as an emergency signal on a vehicle, as for instance if you were driving in a remote country area and had trouble, and were perhaps out of a cell phone service area. In that circumstance it's quite possible a RR horn could attract attention and help. They have also been used on some fire apparatus. My opposition is to the indiscriminate usage of these signals on public roads.
     In the past, I have had RR horns on various vans that I have owned so that I could do run-by's and make sound recordings. I must admit that the temptation to horn slowpokes out of the way on public roads is almost irresistible when you've got a K3LA on top of your vehicle, but doing so is really a very bad idea. First of all, the sound levels are much louder than what you get from other types of standard vehicle air horns, even those horns that purport to be trainhorns that are widely sold on the Internet.
     Then of course there is the possibility of making someone think that a train is approaching, especially if the vehicle horn is sounded near an operating RR track.

     The key issue of course is that if you do have RR horns on your private vehicle that you use them responsibly. On numerous times when I was driving my K-equipped van down the highway, I'd have other people reach up an yank an imaginary pull cord, obviously requesting me to sound the K. Although it was very tempting, I always resisted this on highways. But does everybody else exercise this restraint? I doubt it. You might want to visit some of the websites that sell trainhorns and which also post letters from their customers on their sites. You will find the commentary quite enlightening. 
 
     Perhaps the best way to think about having a train horn if you do not have access to a real train would be to approach it like owning a gun. Guns are great if you are a hunter or if you do target shooting, or if you are a collector of weaponry. But guns can also kill people. A sudden train horn blast at close range may startle another motorist either into a heart attack or cause him to lose control of his vehicle, possible with fatal results.
    Train horns and the regular sounding of them are essential parts of the horn and whistle com-munity's activities, but like responsible gun owners, we also use caution, common sense and restraint, confining our activities to either our events or remote and isolated locations where we can enjoy our hobby without adversely affecting anyone else.

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